This book could be a jewel for those who like novels and long storytelling but not for those who are looking for role-playing, the book is really a novel with interactive elements but perhaps I misunderstood the nature of this product. When I started reading I saw the main character block and it is very similar to any found in a RPG adventure, so I was looking for my first roll, then I made my first decision and felt a big pleasure, I thought a lot to make it thinking that a bad decision would bring a nasty consequence but reading further I realized it was a linear story and whatever decision I took always I would be in the same line in no time.
I made the experiment twice, I made one decision and read the outlet, and then retried and I got the same result with only a little irrelevant happening or not happening to just get in the line again.
If you enjoy novels then this one will appeal you but I just got bored after reading 10 more pages and only making three or four irrelevant decisions, I just think I wasted my money since my interest was a RPG with more decisions and rolls and more character development not just a plain novel.
I will give it a 3 because still it might be a fun novel to those who look for that genre but not for me I was looking for a RPG and supposedly this is a place in which we look for that otherwise we look for the fiction section.

As expected, it's a little generic... But as a look at how magic can be integrated into classic Western European Medieval cities it seem to be very well thought out. I haven't played in a game that uses that EXACT culture in years, but I'd think that, as a starting point, this would make a valuable beginning on adapting any existing culture to allow for magic.

A well presented and concise guide to making magical maps with plenty of illustrations and an example. Well worth a read for anyone who's starting their own world, but doesn't know where the mountains should go.

This well-conceived and well-executed supplement gives DMs a robust toolkit for incorporating plagues into fantasy role-playing campaigns. The crunchy parts are for D&D 4e, but the first three (of five) chapters are largely crunch-free and could be used by GMs running any system. Those first three chapters describe the onset, progress, and aftermath of a plague. Author Creighton Broadhurst has done a particularly good job in these chapters of balancing realism/verisimilitude with compelling and efficient gameplay. Chapters 4 and 5 present 4e-specific options for players and DMs, including magic items, rituals, disease stat blocks, skill challenges, monsters, and even a god of disease. The text seems to have been well-edited, with very few grammatical errors slipping through. The typography needs more polish; in particular, using Times New Roman for the body text and Georgia for the footnotes creates an unpleasant clash of serifs. Aside from these relatively minor aesthetic points, I wholeheartedly recommend this supplement.

The 130+ superhero adventure seeds in this compilation come in two basic formats: short one-paragraph hooks and longer two-paragraph adventure starters. As you might expect, the quality varies, and there’s some degree of repetition (as in comics themselves). Usually this isn’t too bad; there’s always room in the comics, and in a superhero campaign, for the umpteenth alternate-earth story (it took DC Comics less than a year after the New 52 debut to introduce Earth-2) or Golden Age redux tale. However, pp. 7 and 15 contain identical (word for word) seeds, which is a little more annoying, and two different seeds exploit the “retirement home for Golden Age superheroes” trope.

Sadly, embarrassing grammatical, stylistic, and typographical errors and inconsistencies pepper the compilation. In some cases, these inconsistencies appear within just a few words of each other (as when “M-theory” appears once with a capital “M” and once with a lower case “m,” with only one word in between). In at least two instances, two seeds run together without an obvious break.

If you’re thinking of buying the compilation for a minor, you’ll want to know that several of the seeds (at least half a dozen or more) deal with “PG-13” situations (usually sexual improprieties).

Although the compilation is marked with the d20 logo and uses the d20 Open Game License (with all content marked as open, to ERP’s credit), there’s actually no system-specific material in the seeds, and you can get equally good use out of the compilation no matter what supers system you’re running.

Probably about 2/3 of the seeds appeal to me enough to consider developing them into fuller scenarios, which is a pretty good ratio for this type of product (which needs broad appeal rather than deep satisfaction of any one customer’s personal tastes). In my judgment, it’s worth your time and worth the price if you run any superhero games. You could probably even adapt some of the seeds for high-magic fantasy games.

The Pozas collections are rather variable, and this one is poor. Five pieces. If you want a "common room" set up in a cave with a surprisingly large fire, or very black steps down into a catacomb with skulls, you might get value from the price. The library with torch is really hard to make sense of - I think that's a chair but it could be a giant hand! The garden and modern flat-roofed compound buildings are undetailed and not very interesting, but could serve as small spot pics.

Expeditious Retreat ought to provide decent previews of these products so customers can see what they'll be getting. In this case I gambled and lost.

"One Shot" starts out as a generic RPG framework. What sets it apart is the fine tuning and GM advice for single-session games, especially the notion of being consistent just within the game session. This is very liberating because, as the author notes, a lot of effort in a typical RPG is put into creating a whole consistent game world that must support long campaign play. From that premise, the author presents a simple set of rules for character creation and conflict resolution.

The fact that characters may have distinct and arbitrary abilities makes me think that the system will work better with pre-generated characters. After all, freeform abilities mean the GM will have to discuss with each player to avoid inbalance and abuse, and such a lengthy process doesn't make sense for a one-shot game.

Conflict generation is a straightfoward d12 roll and there really is no need to get any more complicated as characters won't grow in power over a campaign etc. One thing I found missing is the use of Areas of Expertise. They seem to be descriptors that allow an automatic success for a character in certain circumstances but the text isn't really clear. In any case, the game will probably work just as well if they are not used.

All things considered, One Shot is an interesting read whether to use the proposed system or just the advice for one shots that may be applied to other games. As a game system, it is not for beginning GMs as there is a lot of planning and decisions to be made to flesh out an adventure.

Down the Shadowvein is the follow up to AA#1: The Podmaster of the Sinister Shroom, and can be used to follow that adventure or on it's own. All the GM needs to supply is an underground river they can canoe down and a map leading to treasure down river. Its for character levels 3 to 5.

I really wish I could find my copy of PotSS, but it's packed in a box somewhere in storage. Ah well, onward to Down the Shadowvein.

The GM's map (and the Player's map too) is a hex map, inducing the river and adventure locations and passages. It's weird but cool that the underground map is similar to an above ground map, even though the party is going to be thinking "dungeon".

If it reminds me of any classic adventure, it's D1-2, when the party travelled through the underdark. There is much of that feel here, as the random encounters the party may interact with include merchant trains. Merchant trains underground, ya gotta love it. :)

The main encounter areas are mapped out like dungeons, so your players (and you) will be in comfortable surroundings at times. In truth, this plays out (almost) like a sandbox campaign underground, as the players have choices in the directions they will take.

Still, it is not the usual sort of adventure, and it may be awkward for some GMs to run it. It is underground, and most travel will probably be via river, but there are also numerous passages for the party to stumble through.

Depending on how thoroughly the party explores their sandbox, this could take two to the 4 hour sessions to complete. There really is a lot to explore in the two dozen pages in this adventure.

Stonepick Crossing is Advanced Adventures Module #22 from Expeditious Retreat Press. It's an OSRIC (AD&D) module for a full party of 1st to 3rd level characters. It actually says for 6 to 8 characters, but if I went above 6 (maybe 7 on a really good day) I'd probably never DM again. So, like I said, it's for a full party of adventurers.

The adventure takes place in the tharp of Stonepick. It will start in the town proper, and then lead on other dungeon like areas. Which all sounds like old hat, but there is more then one thing going on in the Tharp of Stonepick. I count at least 2 main plots and some sub-plots going on, and PC can get involved in any or all. Which means that the DM needs to keep an eye on who the party has met and some events that may be going on behind the scenes. A railroad this is not. The party has a lot of freedom as to what they are going to accomplish and in which order.

Heck, they even throw in a new monster. Not a bad way to start off a campaign if you are willing to flesh the town out and the immediate surroundings, as the party has much to do right from the start.

This series has been highly praised, not because it's the best it can be, but because it's the only one of its kind. For me, it seemed like a well-researched guide to a medieval city, with the word "magical" tacked on. There are craft guilds, thieve's guilds... and a wizard's guild. There are pubs, armorers...and alchemist's shops. Otherwise the society is unchanged.

This is fine for a class-based d20 game where wizardry is confined to a few character types. But what if you have a more open skills-based system? What's the effect of having lots of people knowing a little magic? Really thinking it through, how would magic change a society?

In all though a good introduction to the subject. Can't imagine why they aren't charging for it.

Possibly the most fun - and one of the longest! - of solo adventures I've played. It also runs well as a one-on-one adventure with one GM and one player! The characters are well defined and one is actually given real choices that seem (but aren't) unlimited. We have hoped for a sequel for years, and maybe if sales pick up - a LOT - we'll finally see another "Party of One" adventure.

WAY underpriced at $6.00! This price should be at least $10, if not more.

Intriguing comparisons of visual theme and composition may be the most compelling reason to spend time with this project. Verbally, the author may have tried to address too broad a field, as he struggles at the same time either to treat each source with the depth it deserves or to cover all of the literature I might have expected to see. I wonder if he would have done better to choose a single interesting theoretical approach to 'nostalgia' and apply it with rigour.

My initial reaction was one of disappointment as I thought this would be more of an adventure but then I realized that misunderstanding was totally my own fault.

For what it is, this is a pretty good product. It's simply a collection of unrelated encounters that take place in a single geographical setting, in this case a swamp.

The encounters are simply but worth looking at. They provide a couple of very basic hooks to give you a reason to go in the swamp. One of them is that a local person hires the group to go retrieve a statue of a frog. Would have liked something a bit more original, but that's ok.

The one thing that is good AND bad about this product is that one of the 10 or so encounters that is included offers a quest that involves going to another encounter location and bringing something back so it's potentially more than just a combat encounter. I really like this idea of tying the encounters together with some roleplay interaction and some combat I don't need it to be one big adventure but smaller related bundles of encounters would have been fantastic. If they had done this for every encounter (or at least half of them so that each encounter was linked to another), I would gladly give this 4 stars. As it is, I kind of grudgingly give it 4 stars because even though they missed some opportunities, I think that pretty much any DM could grab one of these encounters and run it stock with zero prep and I appreciate that.

I also like that the encounters are scaled for you so you know what to place for each of the levels in the range. The maps were incredibly basic, in some cases, just a couple of lines on a grid. Had they unified the encounters a bit more, punched up the maps a bit and offered more than a cursory throw away hook, this could have gotten 5 stars.